Masawa Minute 3
Mental Health RoI = 5.7x! | Cuttlefish | + More!
This is the Masawa Minute, a snippet of what we’re consuming in the areas of mental wellness, social impact, and impact investing.
🎧🍬 Diabetology
Ologies is a fun podcast series that digs into different and often esoteric sciences. This episode is all about diabetology. It’s an entertaining look at all-things blood glucose, including the concept that sugar has an effect on your mental health! We were surprised to learn that 10% of US-Americans have diabetes. If you like this episode, be on the watch for the second part dropping next week (Feb 2020). [Thanks, Scott!]
Note: Ologies uses flavorful language + Masawa doesn’t necessarily support the medical/non-medical opinions in this episode, but does support the belief that sugar and processed foods are the devil.
🦑🏠 Cuttlefish!
What phenomenal creatures! In this clip we see if a cuttlefish can blend into garrish interior design. This is a metaphor for how we sometimes wish we could blend into the background or hypnotize others into listening to our commands. If you had these mad skillz, how might you use them?
Can Cuttlefish camouflage in a living room?
🧠💰 Mental Health Investments Work!
In this important study, researchers modeled the treatment costs and health outcomes for depression and anxiety treatment in 36 countries from 2016–2030 and found that a $1 investment resulted in a $2.3–$3.0 return, when economic benefits only are considered, and a $3.3–$5.7 return when the value of health returns are also included. This is huge, given that the estimated economic cost of mental illness will reach $6T by 2030 (that’s $6,000,000,000,000 with 12 zeros!). [Thanks, Crick!]
“Scaling-up treatment of depression and anxiety: a global return on investment analysis”
📝⛓️ Break the Anxiety Chains.
Almost a fifth of US-Americans deal with anxiety, an often crippling experience. And this includes leaders of all types. In this article, Sabina Nawaz helps us to better identify the types of anxious episodes we might experience and provides some tips on how to deal with them.
“How Anxiety Traps Us, and How We Can Break Free”
❤️🗺️ Impact Investing = Better Future
This story, the cover of the February 2020 issues of “Financier Worldwide” is a nice summary of impact investing from the financier’s viewpoint.
Some highlights include a figure from the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN)’s report that funds manage an estimated $529B in impact investing assets currently, and that impact investing isn’t a new way of investing, but rather a new purpose for investing.
“Toward a better future: the value of impact investing”
✨Masawa Update ✨
Bushfires burn, helicopters dot the skies above Davos, and it’s grey in Berlin, but we have a lot to be grateful for!
The advisory board will still be announced soon and still includes visionaries in the fields of psychiatry, nutrition, finance, sustainability, organizational development, and blockchain! 🥳.
The Masawa Friends + Family funding round is about 60% subscribed, so it won’t be open for very much longer.
Legal takes a long time… We’re figuring out the jigsaw puzzle that is setting up a steward-owned fund in a place that will allow us to innovate.
We’ll be at the ChangeNOW Summit in Paris next week, alongside 20,000 other positive impact changemakers.
And we continue to engage with inspiring founders, investors, coaches, activists, and family members working to make mental wellness matter.
Give someone a big hug today + take care of each other! 🤗😘
Joshua Haynes
Joshua is the Founder and Managing Partner of Masawa. He believes that investing in mental wellness, focusing on maximizing positive social impact, and founders’ mental health, and supporting their resilient organizations makes sense for society and for business.
